Is touching co-workers OK?

Great Debates
161

Here is a good situation which will explain- you have arachnophobia. It’s Halloween, and as is customary, Susan is decorating the office. Some of the decorations include webbing with little plastic spiders and a big rubber spider at the corner of a cube.

Situation #1. You march into HR, and inform them you have arachnophobia, and Susans decorations are making you uncomfortable and they should punish her. They ask you if you ever mentioned this to Susan (or anyone), you say NO, and they mark you down as a idiot troublemaker- you will never get a promotion again, and will be the first to be laid off.

#2. You do mention it to Susan , and she sez “Oh, I am so sorry, I didn’t know!” and takes them down.

#3, as above but Dave the office joker hears this, and fills your cube with spiders, webs and a big rubber one that falls from the ceiling on you. You complain to HR. They fire his stupid ass.

That’s what you do when you have a phobia- you tell others. Then they can help you. People do not want to make you uncomfortable- in general.

162

FWIW I had a training for work in which we were taught that there is only one place it’s okay to touch someone you don’t have some kind of familial or intimate relationship with: the outside of the arm, between the shoulder and elbow. Seems to make a certain amount of sense, instinctually.

163

I wasn’t joking. I think that my earbuds (and usually sunglasses) are pretty straightforward cues that I’m not currently in the mood to interact. I’m not sure that that’s a sign of the looming apocalypse, but how difficult is it to recognize and respect obvious cues?

164

I never said I hug my co-workers daily. But there are people I have a “hugging relationship” with and people I don’t–for those that I do, we hug each other after a long separation (for us, the first day back after summer break), or when someone gets really good or really bad news. I think that’s pretty standard. But I have other co-workers I would never hug, even though we are every bit as close, because it seems pretty clear that they aren’t huggers (I, myself, am pretty hug-neutral).

I think there’s also situation #2b:

You tell Susan. She acknowledges what you say, but nothing changes. You tell her again. She makes excuses about why THESE spiders aren’t scary–the ones in the webs are tiny, too tiny to be scary. The big one is just a big friendly cartoon spider no one could be scared of. You press. She says she will take them down. She doesn’t. You talk to her again. She tells you that she talked to everyone else in the office and no one else was bothered or offended by the spiders. She asks if you have this phobia at home, or just at work? Do you prohibit your children from having spiderman toys? But she agrees to take them down. Nothing happens. You FINALLY go to HR or your supervisor or whatever and they talk to Susan. She is genuinely flabbergasted and tells everyone in the office that you ran straight to HR and never said a word to her, and people believe her because she’s telling the truth–those early conversations didn’t even register to her because she finds the idea of being sincerely scared of plastic spiders to be just silly.

I have seen this pattern over and over again in my professional life. Much of the time, a single conversation does the trick, but in some cases people get told something is a problem and they just don’t hear it until it’s escalated.

165

If that’s your point, then I feel comfortable declaring your point absurd, given that you actually quoted me saying the opposite.

166

“You should see a doctor about that” is the exact opposite of trying to diagnose someone over the internet.

You posted about your abnormal response to normal behavior as a reason why other people should behave the way you want them to. Instead of making your problem someone else’s problem and trying to control them, an alternative would be to just treat the problem.

167

Why are so few posters noticing that MEN touching WOMEN is the salient part of the discussion? Not whether different cultures find different levels of touching appropriate. Not whether certain individuals are hypersensitive to touch. Men don’t touch each other with the same intent that they touch women. Women don’t react to women touching them the way they react to men touching them.

Because a man touching a woman, signaling a controlling message, is different than any other kind of touching. Sorry, it just is. It is apparently somewhere between hard and impossible for men to grasp just how dangerous men are to women, fundamentally and always. That women are always conscious of boundaries being crossed and having to decide how to deal with it, how to delicately and tactfully get a man to back off without arousing or angering, without raining down contempt, humiliation, or just escalation down on herself. It is a dance men don’t do, don’t even notice.

168

This seems like another “don’t make your problem their problem” situation.

169

It’s not really my place to decide for an employee what they should or shouldn’t find offensive. If Sally doesn’t like to be touched it’s not unreasonable for her to come tell me it made her feel uncomfortable and she doesn’t want it happen in the future. Some people are really uncomfortable with confrontation of any kind and we have an open door policy where I work. If I’m dismissive towards Sally’s complaint I’m just making the situation worse. Sally’s going to get the impression that we don’t care when an employee makes a complaint, she may become disengaged, or she may file a complaint with the EEOC. By taking Sally’s complaint seriously I may be able to avoid all of the above.

I agree. And you may have seen in one of my previous posts where I clearly stated that I didn’t see a need to give Mr. McFeely a warning or fire him. Just because I think Sally’s making a valid complaint doesn’t mean I think Mr. McFeely did anything wrong.

170

Some people just don’t recognize boundaries. One would hope a gentle admonition not to touch would be sufficient and not require a formal HR complaint.

Awhile back, a nurse I didn’t know came up to me in a hospital corridor and began rearranging the neck of my scrub top, saying that the tag was sticking out. I recoiled a bit and told her no thanks. Then I reported her to the head of nursing and got her fired.

Well no, I didn’t do that. Imagine if the situation had been in reverse though. :eek:

171

You are indeed trying to diagnose me. You are diagnosing me as being ill because I don’t want to be handled by other people willynilly. You suggested two possible diagnoses, both of which are problems with wanted touch, which is not a problem that I have. Not wanting to be touched by anybody whatever time they feel like it is not an illness that needs to be treated.

Someone else insisting on touching me against my will is trying to control me. Why should they be allowed to do so?

I agree with this to some extent; but I don’t like unwanted touch from other women, either, and I think there are a lot of others who also don’t.

What are you suggesting the arachnophobe in that example do? Quit the job, so that the other person can put up Halloween decorations – and not only so that they can put up Halloween decorations, but so that they can put up Halloween decorations to their precise individual taste?

Widely varying people very often need to work together. Figuring out how they can effectively do so is a problem for all of them together, and needs to be dealt with in that fashion.

172

Bolding mine.

Common sense of course includes respecting other’s peoples wishes when it is reasonably possible to do so. It isn’t too hard to decorate for Halloween without using spiders, so it should be respected and not doing so when such has been expressed is being a jerk. Employees intentionally being jerks to other employees may require HR involvement. OTOH what if Halloween as a holiday offends you? You believe it is an affront to your religious beliefs or something. Should the entire office/business be prohibited from decorating or celebrating at all to accommodate your honest strong preference? If someone knows you dislike any touch they should avoid touching you. Give you the space you prefer.

To the bolded part: is the issue the touch or the message the touch is conveying? The message is “we are over time and you need to wrap it up.” Yes, someone telling you that, verbally or non-verbally, is giving a controlling message. Is that “trying to control you” out of bounds in a business setting?

Because then wow I am out of bounds all the time. If I am running a meeting I am keeping the meeting and the discussion under control and running on time to finish up when it should every time!

173

DSeid:

It’s not functionally possible to have business meetings without someone controlling the timing and the subjects of the meeting. If we’re going to have this sort of society at all, we have to have business meetings. Therefore it’s necessary to work out ways of doing so.

It’s not, however, necessary to have these ways include one or more of the people at the meeting putting their hands on one or more other people. If, indeed, everybody at the meeting thinks such a technique is entirely OK, then there’s no reason not to use it. However, the chances that nobody does mind being so handled, in the modern USA in which people from wildly different cultural and individual backgrounds – and, yes, genders – will be mixed together at such a meeting, are so low that ‘keep your hands off other people in this context’ ought to be the default.

Use your words. I’ve told other people it’s time for them to stop talking when I chair meetings, and I’ve been told myself to stop talking when I was running on. The world did not come to an end, and nobody took offense. It’s not necessary to yell ‘Shut up already, you fool!’ Just say something like ‘We’d better move on to the next agenda item now’ or ‘Thank you for that. Does anyone else have something new to add to the discussion? if not, I’m going to call the vote now’ or whatever else similar suits the situation. Use the briefest of pauses to break in if necessary; everybody needs to take a breath sometime.

If there’s an actual reason not to use words, draw attention to a timepiece. Just about everybody these days is carrying one of some sort.

– to what might possibly be your larger point: as soon as there’s more than one person involved in anything, it’s not possible for all of them to always do everything they want in exactly the way they want. The other person(s) involved have to be taken into account. If you want to phrase that as one person controlling the other(s), you can do so – but, if so, you have to acknowledge that there’s always going to be controlling involved. If I’m trying to ‘control’ somebody by wanting them to keep their hands off of me, as Ruken posted, then they’re trying to ‘control’ me by putting their hands on me. It’s not reasonable to blame me for the first but say that the second is perfectly fine.

Who gets the ‘control’ in the case of disagreements is not decided solely by majority rule. If there are six people in the room, we don’t say that it’s OK for five of them to attack and rob the sixth because they happen to be the majority. If there are six people in the room, we shouldn’t say it’s OK for five of them (or any one of the five of them) to touch the sixth against the sixth’s will, just because they happen to be in the majority in that particular room.
To several others: we have absolutely no evidence that I know of that the person who complained to HR asked for the person who touched her to be fired; let alone that HR complied. We don’t even have evidence that she hadn’t first tried to talk to him directly – we have the statement of the person who posted the incident in the other thread that she didn’t do so after that incident, but crickets on whether the OP has any way of knowing whether she had done so after one or more previous incidents.

174

I touch men at work in exactly the same manner that I touch women. You are mistaken to assume you can accurately judge intent. Moreover, I identified two types of situations where I was bothered by physical contact initiated by women.

Hopefully we will soon get to the point where we interact solely from afar via keyboards. Yeah, that will be an improvement over actually having to share physical space with another human. No chance anyone will mistake intent or get offended by THAT! :rolleyes:

175

As has been said- if a reasonable request has been made and the behavior deliberately constantly re-occurs, sure, go to HR.

But altho your scenario is plausible, why believe the worst to start?

176

Because it’s not. It’s about touching co-workers. Not men touching women.

And it’s really not. Men & women can actually have normal non-sexual encounters, believe it or not.

177

Hardly. Look, nearly everyone has a mild phobia or two. You’re not mentally ill for having one.But not wanted to be touched, even by people you know well, is a phobia.

Ask nicely.

178

thorny,

Just so it’s clear then - your issue is not that someone is trying to “control” you and that they should not be allowed to do so, you recognize that such is part of a work environment and running meetings, but the non-sexual non-aggressive touch itself. It’s not the message for you; it’s the medium.

As to

Absolutely not solely by majority rule and also absolutely not by the minority imposing their preference as the default for everyone either.

I don’t touch co-workers much but I sometimes quietly hum some song that’s gotten into my head while reviewing charts before going into a room. If one of my co-workers is annoyed by my humming they should tell me and I’ll stop, try to remember that humming near that person annoys them and stop myself in the future. There is some non-zero number of people who are annoyed by others humming. Respecting those individuals expressed preferences is not hard to do and should be done. Expecting that no one should ever quietly hum at work everywhere without getting the prior consent of co-workers because there is some non-zero possibility that a co-worker does not like humming, because you dislike it, because humming annoys you, is unreasonable.

Humming is as unto a light touch on the wrist. Ask the hummer to stop and they should not hum again. We are not talking about belting out show tunes or screaming “fuck!”.

179

My random thoughts

In the realm of things that people do that are wrong, some things are more wrong than others. Some things are way more wrong than others.

I was not at that meeting so I can’t judge the intent of the guy that touched the women on the wrist. I’ll agree that he shouldn’t have done it, and best it was a lapse of mindfulness that made a coworker unnecessarily uncomfortable.

But I do have a problem with people describing this action using phrasing that is typically associated with physical or sexual assault. Such as “he put his hands on me” or “he touched me without my consent”. While it is true that these phrases do describe the action accurately, I also believe that these phrases are loaded because they are typically associated with assault. Just accurately describe what happened - he touched my wrist lightly during a meeting. Then let that be the metric for judging the degree of wrongness.
Equating this action to assault cheapens the idea of assault and makes it more difficult for victims of more serious offenses to get the justice they deserve.

Now, there are guys out there that like to harass and discomfit women. And they know how to make a light non-sexual touch, a random greeting, or simple eye contact into full blown harassment. And that is part of the technique, they will always come back with “ all I did was touch her wrist”, “Jeez, I just said Good Morning” or “ all I did was look at her, she’s crazy”. It’s a deliberate technique.

Now the answer to this is NOT a ban on brief casual non-sexual touching, conversation or eye contact. In fact, I believe that by doing that you isolate your coworkers from each other, making them more vulnerable.
In fact, I think the best defense against the random office creep is a socially bonded workplace. A bunch of friends can shut down a creep faster than any HR Department.

Now, I’ll admit most of my career took place in the days before HR departments and I never worked in a place with a formal HR department.

And in my experience, we worked stuff out like grown-ups. Seriously. Person A would say “I didn’t like it when you did X, it made me uncomfortable”. And Person B said “I’m so sorry, I won’t do X again”. And it worked, because most of us are good people that like getting along at work.

I can think of a couple of times when someone used an intermediary. Once a bunch of the older guys were uncomfortable with the way a young female sales assistant talked about her sex life and they asked me to talk to her. Another time a guy was continually harassing a couple of women until a group of guys at work let him know strongly that it would be a bad idea to continue.

But we worked it out, usually with a minimum of drama. The key is to remember that most people really are good people, even if you don’t have a lot in common with them.

180

No. Not wanting to be touched except when and by whom I want to be touched is not an illness that needs to be treated. It’s an entirely reasonable human preference. So do not tell me that I need to go to a doctor and get “cured” of it.

Correct. The “control” phrasing was in response to Ruken, who had said that I was trying to “control” other people by asking them to keep their hands off me.

True.

Handling other people against their will by putting one’s hand on them at meetings, poking them to get attention, etc. is not assault. I don’t think anybody’s said that it is.

It isn’t humming absentmindedly in the corner, either. It’s claiming a sort of right to another person’s body.

I agree that this can often be worked out between the people concerned without any hard feelings. I discussed, in fact, a case in which I and a co-worker have done so. But I don’t agree that this means that the default, in most contexts, ought to be that the people who want to do the touching all get one touch each, plus however many they need to be reminded of (since if touching is considered the default, believe me, most people even with good intentions will need to be reminded). And I most certainly don’t agree that it should be as many touches as they want because, if I’m understanding properly a couple (not all) of the people posting in this thread, it’s all the problem of the person who doesn’t want to be touched and they shouldn’t even bring it up.

And I don’t think that saying this minimizes actual assault. If anything, getting across to people that touching others is not in most situations automatically permissible might reduce such assault. I think we’re mostly no longer teaching children that they have to kiss Uncle Mustache if they don’t want to; even though most Uncle Mustaches have no bad intentions. I think there’s good reason for that. (And no, I am most certainly suggesting that kids should never kiss their uncles. I’m saying they shouldn’t have to kiss their uncles; which is not at all the same thing.)